Reunited
By: Daniel P. Smith | Categories: Alumni Achievements
In February 2022, self-described “gearhead” Cole Getzler, CS 01, traveled to car-loving Puerto Rico on a single-minded mission: to find the silver 2000 Volkswagen GTI VR6 he’d parted with 19 years prior.
Getzler, then a Georgia Tech sophomore, purchased the six-cylinder manual-transmission Volkswagen in February 2000 for a cool $24,000, packing it with all the options he could get, including black leather seats.
“I certainly didn’t need a car payment, but I was young and dumb,” Getzler admits.
Over the subsequent three years, Getzler logged nearly 130,000 miles in the vehicle, much of it on road adventures with college pals. They hunted for great steak in Texas, eluded Federales in Mexico, enjoyed hijinks at Mardi Gras, and gazed into the Grand Canyon’s seemingly endless abyss. Those memories only tightened Getzler’s affinity for his GTI.
But as Getzler settled into professional life in August 2003, he swapped the Volkswagen for a more sophisticated German automobile, the 1998 BMW M Roadster. He instantly regretted his decision.
“Driving a car for 130,000 miles, you get to know its capabilities and limits,” Getzler says.
With the GTI gone, Getzler moved on with life. He married, became a father, and launched SimplePart, an e-commerce platform for automotive parts. And though he would own multiple cars over the next dozen years, nothing topped the GTI.
“I never found anything with the same fizz,” he says.
Around 2015, Getzler began looking to reconnect with his old four-wheeled friend. He created searches for the car’s vehicle identification number (VIN) and scoured online forums devoted to VW lovers. Nothing popped up. At the suggestion of a fellow car enthusiast, Getzler entered the GTI’s VIN into a maintenance service app. Remarkably, a tag renewal in Puerto Rico appeared.
“It was the first lead I’d gotten in years,” Getzler says.
He contacted Volkswagen dealers, car repair shops, parts stores, and DMV offices across the island seeking any additional information. Again, nothing. Through a fortuitous friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend connection, Getzler learned the GTI was registered in the Puerto Rican municipality of Aibonito.
Drawing closer to his target, Getzler and his buddy, John, left Atlanta in February 2022 for a multi-day visit to Puerto Rico seeking a reunion. They held maps of Aibonito’s 31 square miles of roadways and an admittedly primitive plan: to drive one road at a time trying to make the car honk by pressing the spare key fob, which Getzler had never relinquished.
“Honestly, I figured I maybe had a 5 percent shot at finding it,” Getzler says.
Still, he prepared for the best. He assembled a binder of paperwork on the vehicle and old photos. If he found the car, he wanted to make an earnest case to purchase it.
After nearly two days of traveling the streets of Aibonito and appealing to local police and DMV officials, Getzler considered abandoning his search.
“It seemed pointless, like ‘What am I doing here?’” he says.
Driving the last mapped road in a hillside neighborhood, Getzler’s eyes beamed when he spotted a silver GTI sitting outside a home.
“I was absolutely gobsmacked,” he says.
Getzler exchanged pleasantries with the homeowner, explained his plight, and confirmed the VIN. He learned the GTI belonged to the homeowner’s son, who had moved to the U.S. The car had been sitting idle for more than a year.
That evening, Getzler connected with the GTI’s passionate owner of 10-plus years. Though the car’s odometer read 400,000 miles, its motor had been massively turbocharged, and a colony of frogs lived inside the vehicle, Getzler asked about purchasing the car.
“He named a big number and I was only all too happy to pay it,” Getzler says.
Finally reunited with his beloved GTI, Getzler navigated a labyrinth of complex requirements to ship the car from San Juan to the U.S. mainland. It arrived at his Atlanta-area home in April 2022, and Getzler has spent the last year-plus restoring the vehicle, including its mechanicals and interior.
“It’ll be another year or two until it looks new again, but it’s getting there,” he says.
Not that Getzler minds the ongoing saga. The effort is worth the reward.
“When I sit behind the wheel,” he says, “it’s like falling back into an old, comfortable friendship.”
